Copyright termination rights let a songwriter take back a song they signed away decades ago. On Monday the US Supreme Court let stand a ruling that says the song comes back worldwide instead of stopping at the US border. The court decided nothing to get there. Four of its nine justices sat out. If you write songs, own a catalogue or plan to buy one, here is the timeline, the catch and what to do this week.
Copyright termination rights case ends because the court ran out of justices
The short version comes from Billboard: on October 19 the court refused to overturn the ruling that took termination global. The long version is stranger. Much stranger.
Justices Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson took no part, and the order gives no reason, MBW reports. That left five. Federal law needs six for a quorum (the minimum number of judges who must take part before a court can act).
So the five said the case could not be heard next term either. That triggers a rarely used statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2109, which makes the court affirm the lower ruling as if the justices had split evenly. Copyright Lately sums it up: Cyril Vetter “wins by default.”
Nobody voted. The songwriter won anyway.
No justice wrote a single word about copyright termination rights, and yet one of the biggest rulings on them in decades is now final, which is roughly like winning a chess tournament because your opponent’s chair never arrived. That matters to anyone holding copyright termination rights. It matters more to anyone holding a catalogue those rights could unwind.
What happened so far, from one dollar to no quorum
The whole fight is about one frat-rock song and a contract worth one dollar.
- 1962: Cyril Vetter and the late Donald Smith write “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)”. The Swingin’ Medallions take it to No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.
- 1963: they assign it to Windsong Music Publishers “in exchange for one dollar,” per the Fifth Circuit.
- 2019: Vetter serves a termination notice, effective May 3, 2022. Resnik Music Group buys Windsong.
- 2023: Robert Resnik still claims a 25% stake, so Vetter sues in Louisiana federal court.
- January 2025: Chief Judge Shelly Dick declares Vetter sole owner throughout the world.
- January 2026: the Fifth Circuit affirms.
- March 2026: Capitol CMG (UMG), Essential Music Publishing (Sony), Warner-Tamerlane (WMG) and BMG buy Resnik’s stake and step in as defendants.
- June 11, 2026: the publishers file their petition. Vetter answers on September 14, and they reply on September 30.
- October 19, 2026: four recusals, no quorum, ruling stands.
Copyright termination rights in thirty seconds
US law lets songwriters take back rights they signed away. Pre-1978 works qualify after 56 years, later works after 35. These copyright termination rights exist because unknown writers had little bargaining power and signed away songs that later became valuable, as Reuters explains.
Until January, the industry treated copyright termination rights as US-only. A writer got back the American half of the song. The publisher kept the planet.
Then the Fifth Circuit disagreed. It held that a copyright termination returns the rights worldwide, because the author originally signed over worldwide rights. Simple, really.
Why four justices sat out is still a guess
The order says nothing. MBW does point to a likely link, though. Bertelsmann owns BMG and also Penguin Random House, which has published books by all four recusing justices. Those four, plus Justice Samuel Alito, also stepped aside from a copyright case against author Ta-Nehisi Coates in which Bertelsmann was a defendant.
So a case about authors getting their rights back may have stalled because too many judges are authors with the same publisher. Somewhere, a book royalty statement did more to decide this case than any brief filed in it. Anyway.
Worldwide copyright termination rights, valid in three states
Here is the catch. The ruling binds federal courts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. But the Supreme Court never reached the merits, so there is no nationwide precedent, and courts elsewhere could disagree in a future case.
That means a songwriter in New Orleans and one in Nashville could get different answers on the same copyright termination and the same rights. (Lawyers call this a circuit split waiting to happen. Songwriters call it “wait, what”.)
Then there is the rest of the planet. In an MBW op-ed, Reed Smith partners Nick Breen and Joshua Love argued that foreign courts, collecting societies and licensees may apply their own laws to decide who owns a song and who gets paid. A Louisiana judgment naming you worldwide owner is a strong document. A collecting society abroad may still read it as a polite suggestion from Louisiana.
On paper, copyright termination rights now reach the world. The world still gets a vote.
The majors warned of chaos, the songwriter talked about pittances
The publishers, led by lawyer Paul Clement, did not lose quietly. Their petition said the decision unsettled 50 years of industry practice. It also claimed countless deals backed by billions were now in question. In September they went further and warned of disruption to licensing around the world.
Vetter’s side told a different story. Publishers, his brief argued, paid pittances for unknown songs and then kept all the profit when one became a hit. The district court had already agreed with the spirit of that. It quoted an Artists Rights Institute brief saying a narrow reading leaves authors with “only half of the apple”.
What we think about copyright termination rights after Monday
A confession first. We assumed, like most of the industry, that a termination notice stopped at the US border. We repeated it for years. It turned out to be wrong in three states and unclear in the other forty-seven.
Our view: good for songwriters, messy for everyone, songwriters included. The law exists so an author can undo a bad early deal, and getting back only the American half never matched that idea. Still, a win by default is not the clean answer anyone needed.
The majors will probably look for a better case in another circuit. Catalogue buyers, who have spent years paying big multiples for old songs on the quiet assumption that foreign income was safe forever, will now have to price in a risk their spreadsheets never had a column for. Some writers will send notices expecting worldwide copyright termination rights that another court may refuse them.
And yet the default has moved. For decades it was US rights only. Now a federal appeals court says otherwise, and the Supreme Court left it standing.
What songwriters and catalogue owners should do this week
If you signed a deal 35 or more years ago (56 for pre-1978 songs), this is worth an afternoon:
- Find the original grant and check if it covers the world or only the US.
- Work out your termination window and notice deadline with a music lawyer.
- Check if a dispute over your song would land in Louisiana, Mississippi or Texas.
- List the foreign collecting societies that pay you, since each may apply its own law.
- Recheck catalogue due diligence on every song close to its termination date.
- Read our plain guide to sublicensing in music if “grant” and “assignment” blur together.
In 1963, one dollar bought a song for the whole world. In 2026 it bought a Supreme Court case that nobody decided. Still a better return than the publishers got.
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